Second Date
by EnchantedApril
Summary: The question was whether or not she was willing to go along with him. What would the outcome be this time, with him using her to heal his ego instead of her bribing him to wheedle her way under his shell? Epilogue is UP. COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

_This isn't a sequel to SaintsAndSaviors... that will be coming in a little while. In the meantime, hopefully this will keep you amused. _

Second Date.

Prologue

It was too damn hot for September. And that was just the bottom of his list of complaints. He shouldn't have worn a t-shirt, but he always wore one, and he was nothing without his habits. A shitty attitude, scruff, fifteen vicodin and a t-shirt every a day were but a few of those immutable facets of his life. That didn't stop him from cursing the black cotton already clinging stickily to his underarms as he worked up a sweat walking from car to entrance. A song from Tommy was stuck in his head. Another reason to hate the day. His cane pounded the ground in time to the music rattling between his ears.

The blast of cool, sterile air hit him as the sliding doors parted before him. Good. One thing to be thankful for. The a/c was still working. That small blessing was instantly trumped by the first sight that met his eyes as he walked through the clinic lobby. Stacy. Looking perfectly coifed, perfectly dressed, perfectly, annoyingly, infuriatingly composed as she stood by the nurse's station talking to Cuddy. Didn't she have an office? Why the hell wasn't she in it more often?

He purposely kept his gaze on the fascinating blue wall and away from her face. His jaw, already tight, locked down another notch. He'd grind his teeth to chalk by the time Matt/ Mike/fuckingMark, was well enough to be discharged. The elevator, slow at the best of times, was apparently pissed at him and taking a particularly long time to travel four floors. He could feel Stacy's eyes on him. Longing? Pitying? Pointless.

Finally, long after two holes had been bored into his back, the silver doors opened and he stepped inside. He didn't turn around until he heard the doors start to close.

On the walk to his department he could pretend that nothing had changed. That lasted until he stepped into his office and saw the mail piled on his desk and a dirty coffee mug on his side table. From the doorway, he had a slivered view of Cameron sitting at her desk. Just a slim piece of her visible through the glass, the rest blocked by the solid part of the wall. Even that narrow three inch profile showed him too much. Paler skin. Straighter spine. Hard eyes. More damaged now than she'd been when he hired her.

_I thought you were too screwed up to love anybody._

The last personal words she'd spoken to him.

_You just couldn't love me._

Hell, he didn't know what love was anymore.

He missed her coffee.

He missed the hopeful look on her face.

He missed feeling like her affections were his, to take or to leave.

He was a selfish bastard and he didn't know what the hell he wanted, but he sure as hell wanted more than what he had.

A file of x-rays and lab results was on his chair. He snatched it up and barged into the conference room just like every other morning. They had work to do.

* * *

The lab was always ten degrees colder than any other room in the hospital. Or at least it always felt that way. Maybe it was the lighting. It was too dim for working really, but it gave the room an interesting look, and in a hospital made of glass, that was vitally important. Had to give the donors the feeling that their money was being put to good use, after all, and they couldn't see the difference between ten and fifteen thousand dollar microscopes, but stylish lighting effects, they noticed. 

He stood outside watching her for over ten minutes. She was facing away from him, and he'd stood that way before, more times than he would ever admit to Wilson. He had memorized her back. He had no idea what he was doing, but that had never stopped him before when it came to personal relationships. His cane hit the door a second before his hand, letting her know exactly who was checking up on her. She flinched but made no other sign of acknowledgement.

Tap against the floor. Tap against his sneaker. Heavy thud and he leaned his weight to the right, overdeveloped shoulder holding him upright. "So, Friday, seven o'clock. I'll pick you up."

"Excuse me?" Cameron looked up from her microscope, hand poised over the chart where she was making notes.

"Our second date," House said, as if the answer should be obvious.

"Second…" she shook her head quickly, looking like a cat caught with a particularly annoying bug on its nose. "Oh, you mean because our first date was such a big success." She paused and rested her free hand on her hip. "And six months ago."

A shift to the left foot and then back to the cane. "Right. Lots of first dates don't end well. There's probably a poll or a study in this month's Mademoiselle. Check it out." House was alternately staring at her and behind her, never letting his eyes rest on hers for more than a few seconds. Whose x-rays were those on the wall, and did Cuddy know that the missing tray of test tubes was thanks to Chase dropping them?

Cameron's gaze never left his face. She was studying him. Reading him. He was no longer a mystery to her. She wasn't stupid. She knew what this was about. This was about Stacy being back and taken, and House feeling his own mortality or jealousy or some crap like that. The question was whether or not she was willing to go along with him. What would the outcome be this time, with him using her to heal his ego instead of her bribing him to wheedle her way under his shell? Did relationships based purely on mutual attraction even exist anymore, or were they all plagued with some undercurrent of angst and need? The smart, sane thing to do would be to turn him down and start looking for another job again. She was very smart and relatively sane.

"Seven-thirty," she said, turning back to her microscope after watching him blink. "I'll be wearing jeans, so choose the place accordingly."

House nodded dumbly. His plan hadn't gone as far as her agreeing to the date.

"Don't bring me a corsage," she said as he walked out of the lab. "They just get my hopes up."

* * *

In her perfectly ordered, perfectly clean, starkly decorated apartment, Cameron sat nearly motionless on the sofa. Her knees were pulled to her chest, bare feet flat against the cushions, arms linked around her calves, chin resting lightly on her right knee, eyes focused on the sliver of moon she could see through the window. 

She hadn't seen House again after his clumsy invitation, not that she'd wanted to. In fact she had stayed in the lab longer than necessary, checking her watch until it ticked past five thirty. They didn't have a patient so there was no way House would still be in his office at that time. Avoidance. Good way to approach a date. Foreman and Chase had been gone as well and she'd grabbed her pocketbook, draped her labcoat over her chair and hurried out without speaking to anyone else.

A second date. What the hell was she doing? When she'd arrived at her apartment she'd tossed her things onto a chair, poured a glass of cheap boxed wine and returned to the living room. She'd been there ever since. The wine was barely touched.

These were the times she really should have called up one of her girlfriends to talk some sense into her, but she only had three in the area. One was married with two kids, one worked the nightshift as an EMT at the hospital, and the last had only six… no, five… more months to live and probably wouldn't be particularly interested in hearing about the crisis in her love life.

_Because it's me?_

She'd walked right into that. Played into his hand as an overly emotional woman. But she'd meant every word. She'd been right about every word.

_I hate you!_

Except those. She'd meant them as they were coming from her mouth. They'd held more truth for her in that instant than anything else in her life. Her mind had cheered her for shouting them out. That complete and utter hatred had lasted for almost three seconds before changing into disappointment and resignation. Up until that point she'd merely repeated the words 'get over him' to herself. After that, she started to follow them.

So of course, it only made sense that he would choose to come to her with some pathetic olive-branch offering now that she could be in the same room with him without feeling the need to pummel him or herself. Stages of grief. Yeah, she'd hit a few of them along the way, starting with one lie about acceptance and ending with another.

_I'm glad. I'm happy for you._

_I've jumped on the bandwagon._

A week of seclusion in the lab after that first torturous little dramatic scene, and she'd toughened up enough to face him. Toughened up enough to go toe to toe with him. About everything. She said black, he said white. She said the sky was blue, he'd deny it. He'd always been that way. The difference was that now she fought back. She could tell he didn't like it. He probably hated it if he let himself feel that much through his vicodin induced haze. Oh yes, she knew he'd been taking more than usual, which was quite a feat considering he'd always taken more than the allowed dosage.

After one of their battles over the conference room table, Foreman had cornered her and told her it sounded like she and House were in the middle of a lover's spat. She had glared at him and refused to say anything non-medical to him for a week.

But all that had been pre-Death-Row-Guy (because that's how she always thought of him), pre-Cindy, with her innocence balanced in Cameron's hands. All that had been before Cameron had started to really follow her own advice. Get over him. The key to that turned out to be to stop caring what he thought or what he said. She still argued with him, but without any fire behind her eyes. Her eyes were flat now. Even she could look in the mirror and see that. Maybe that was what this was about. Maybe he missed the fights. They gave him something to do.

_Like a five year old with a puzzle that was just too grown-up for him._

Apparently he wanted the puzzle back. This time she wasn't just going to hand it to him with the answer-key.

Uncurling herself from the sofa, she reached out and picked up her wineglass, tipping the contents into her mouth in three gulps. She carried the glass into the kitchen and started scavenging around for food. Not much appealed to her lately. She had some lasagna, left-over from her dinner with Cindy a week ago. Wilson was right. He was probably right more often than House, he just didn't demand a lot of fanfare about it. Making friends with the dying was only going to destroy her.

She brought her microwaved meal into her bedroom and turned on the television as she propped herself against the pillows. When she'd first moved to Princeton she hadn't owned a television. She'd actually been rather proud of that fact. Loneliness had tempered pride but she still couldn't give in all the way and put one in the living room. Instead she had a cheap fourteen-inch Samsung perched awkwardly on her dresser. A rerun of _CSI _was playing. Good. She could concentrate on someone else's fucked up interpersonal skills.

Between the first and second bodies, she considered the multitude of ways she could back out of the date. She could leave a snide note on his chair. An email would be pointless since he deleted most of them on sight. She could just not be home when he came to pick her up. That would be humiliating for him. It would be almost as humiliating as being belittled in front of a room full of co-workers. She turned up the volume to drown out her thoughts.

By the time the last body and the murderer had been discovered, Cameron had made up her mind to keep the date with House. She'd tried convincing herself that she was being a masochistic fool, but it hadn't worked. She would go out with him because it was what she wanted. She'd go out with him, but this time there would be no probing questions, no soulful glances. This time he could be the one making the effort and maybe if she was in a very good mood she'd throw him a bone.

Getting over him didn't seem to be going very well anyway. She could still look into his eyes and see something that called to her.


	2. Chapter 1

_Here's the next chapter. Apologies that these chapters aren't as long as my ones for S&S were (6pages instead of the usual 9-10) but I'm trying to get them out in a timely manner, and also, I think that sometimes less is more. **Eesh! Found FOUR typos after I posted this. PLUS, I forgot to thank everyone who reviewed the prologue. I'm glad you all are enjoying it. So far it's been fun and interesting to write.** _

Chapter 1

_D-Day Take 2, Minus 1_

Thursday and it was still too hot. So far the only good thing about the morning was the fact that he hadn't been assaulted by the sight of Stacy looking all blasé and professional and I've-moved-on, as he'd entered the hospital. He hadn't seen her all day, as a matter of fact. She seemed to have a knack for showing up in his peripheral vision whenever he least desired to see her, which made him wonder if she'd taken the day off, because he especially did not want to see her today.

Eleven o'clock and he'd already made three diagnoses on the same patient as his team started the afflicted woman on various drugs only to have new symptoms pop up along with a nasty drug-induced seizure. It was about par for the course but it kept his mind somewhat busy, if not quite busy enough. He sat behind his desk awaiting word from Foreman or Chase and contemplating the stack of mail in his inbox. Cameron, he was not expecting to see, at least not without company. In two days she'd managed to perfect the art of dodging him. He was even considering using valuable date-time to ask her for tips to avoid Cuddy. That assumed there was still going to be a date.

He admitted that he had hoped she wouldn't discuss their after-work plans while at work, but he'd expected some sort of acknowledgement that such plans existed and were going to be followed through on. Maybe a little mail sorting, a little coffee making, a little something to show that things were going to revert to normal.

Then again 'normal' was such a relative term, and was that really all he wanted to achieve by asking her out? A return to a not-so-comfortable routine? When he'd first begged her back (and yes, he could admit that it was begging) he'd told her and himself that he just wanted things back to 'the way they were'. Admitting anything else was out of the question. Normal wasn't going to cut it anymore. He was fumbling and groping around for more with 'turn back you fool!' only a pesky annoyance in his brain.What had changed? Because something had definitely changed.

The obvious answer was Stacy. She seemed like the alternate 42. The answer to everything. Why he was crippled. Why he was a bastard. Why he was emotionally stunted. Why he was taking five more vicodin a day and why he washed the last ones down with scotch. Why he suddenly felt the need to reach out to another emotionally damaged person for… something. Yes, she was a very convenient answer, and a satisfying one too. Demonizing her was even fun. He'd mocked up a picture of her with horns and a tail and emailed it to the entire staff. That had been good for a laugh. Unfortunately he wasn't as good at lying to himself as he was at lying to other people. He did it often enough, but somehow the truth always bored into his brain like a particularly annoying worm. He couldn't even truthfully say that he hated Stacy. He sure as hell wanted to, but he couldn't do it, anymore than Cameron could hate him.

And that was the reason things had changed. He'd lied to himself one too many times; saying that he wanted Cameron to hate him; that he wanted her to get over her pesky crush and move on. The truth was in the split-second of instantaneous relief that he'd felt when he'd seen her eyes shift after she'd actually told him that she had.

_I hate you._

He wondered what his expression had looked like as those words registered in his brain. Then he'd seen the subtle change in her face and the feeling of harsh, quick nausea had disappeared as if he'd never felt it, and he'd taken a breath as if he hadn't momentarily forgotten how, and he'd grinned at her, mockingly as usual, and continued on his regularly scheduled bastard routine. It had taken him another week before he'd admitted his relief.

Grabbing up half the mail in one hand and a letter opener in the other, House admitted something else. He wanted something beyond 'normal', but he had no idea how to get it.

* * *

At last, at seven thirty-nine in the evening, a cold front started moving in, but House was still in the hospital and couldn't smell the sharpness in the air that came with autumn, or feel the wind - no longer a breeze, but a wind - that swept through the trees outside his office and sent leaves spiraling to the ground. He tossed his oversized tennis ball into the air, caught it and placed it almost reverently on top of a folder on his desk. Denise Simon's file. Their patient du jour. They'd come close to losing her twice, but she was stable now. Stable and afflicted with a disease that had her remaining years on earth guaranteed to be debilitating. Sometimes discovering the disease didn't actually help much. 

He'd watched Cameron give the woman the bad news, surrounded by her husband and three grown children. He hadn't told her to do it. He hadn't even know she was going to do it. Foreman had popped his head in to tell him. Apparently he thought House would want to know. House had sneered, given a mildly sarcastic reply and watched while Foreman shook his head and walked away. Then he'd limped down to the patient's room and stood outside like some bizarre stalker.

She wasn't crying. She didn't even look emotional, but the caring in her face was unmistakable and the way she rested a hand on the woman's arm, and looked regretfully at the husband, spoke volumes. House had walked away before Cameron had spotted him, and he'd been in his office ever since, wondering about things. Wondering about her. Was it only news of imminent death that ripped at the underpinnings of her professional demeanor? Or was it particular patients that did it? Patients without family. Without support. Patients who reminded her of her husband. Or of herself.

Blue gaze intent on the colored ball, he only looked up when her shadow was already falling over his desk. He'd thought she'd gone for the day.

"Forget something?" he asked, attempting to keep the natural flow of sarcasm to a minimum.

"No," she answered without explanation. Her hair had come loose from its knot at the back of her head, and her lab coat was unbuttoned and listing off one shoulder. "Tomorrow's Friday."

"Yes, yes it is. TGIF and all that."

Familiar reliance on comic relief from House, followed by a not-lately-familiar wisp of a smile from Cameron.

"I wanted to make sure…"

"You backing out?" he said abruptly and she blinked a few times in surprise.

"No. That's why I'm here. I wanted to make sure that you're not backing out. I don't mean backing out of the date… but that too, I guess. I mean, are you backing out of whatever the hell is going on here… if there is something going on… If you are, just tell me now, okay? Don't show up and cut my legs out from under me."

House was surprised by the question, but he could understand her need to ask it. "I'm not backing out." No need to tell her that he didn't know what exactly he _was_ doing.

Nod. Tight little smile. Brief glance. "Good. I'll see you tomorrow then."

"Tomorrow. Right."

He was tapping his cane lightly against the floor but Cameron pretended not to notice the nervous action. She gave another nod and walked out, her sensible shoes barely clicking along the floor, the sound fading long before she was out of sight. House stayed motionless in his chair for a few more minutes and then used his desk to hoist himself to his feet. He shoved his gameboy in one pocket and his iPod in another before reaching for his cane and his jacket. Computer… off. Light... off. Blinds… closed. His lanky gait brought him to the door where he gave one more visual sweep of the office before leaving.

Most of the other doctors were already gone for the day, and the halls were fairly deserted as he made his way to the elevator. With the tip of his cane, he pushed the button, then leaned his weight on the strong wood while watching the little numbers light up sequentially.

"Hey, House!" Wilson's restrained shout made him pivot back around. "I thought you'd still be here. How about grabbing a drink?"

The elevator doors opened and House stepped in, followed closely by Wilson who was wearing a curious combination of a puppy-dog expression and genuine concern.

"Avoiding Julie again? I hope you've kept your divorce lawyer on retainer."

"I'm not avoiding her," Wilson countered. "She's having one of those tupperware parties at the house. Except I don't think it's tupperware; I think it's baskets… or make-up."

"Good to know you pay attention when she talks to you," House quipped. "Maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be one of those sex-toy parties. I hear they're all the rage in suburbia."

Wilson waited patiently for House to run out of steam. "You done now?"

"For the moment."

"So about that drink."

For a second, House considered it. Going home and drinking didn't sound much more enticing than going out and drinking. It did, however, have the great advantage of allowing him to avoid conversation. And by the looks of it, Wilson was in a chatty mood.

"I'll pass."

"C'mon, House. You've spent the last month becoming the human equivalent of Fort Knox. Hell, have you been anywhere other than here or your place in the past two weeks?"

"The 24Hour grocery store, last Saturday at 2am, and the triple x bookstore on Trapello," House answered with a sneer while keeping his eyes focused on the elevator buttons.

"Oh, well that's okay then." Wilson rolled his eyes. "Real healthy, buddy."

House didn't reply, and the silver doors parted. He thought he was keeping up a fairly brisk pace, but Wilson kept up with him.

"Look," Wilson made his final last-ditch effort, "give me a place to hide out and I'll spring for Chinese."

A look of exasperation passed over House's elastic features, but Wilson knew he had him. He never turned down Chinese food.

"Fine," House bit off at last, "but it had better be from Golden Palace, and don't forget the lo mein."

"Deal."

House grunted out his own acquiescence and limped quickly over to his car before Wilson completely lost it and gave him a hearty slap on the back. He sped out of the parking garage, leaving a trail of rubber on the last ramp, and headed towards his townhouse. It was only ten minutes away but he managed to cut the trip down to seven, and soon he was flinging open the door and tossing his keys onto the table beside it.

At least a week's worth of newspapers littered the coffee table, but other than that the place was relatively clean. It was a state of organization attributed more to the fact that he didn't do much there, than to any cleanliness compulsion on his part. He generally came home, ate, drank, played the piano, read, watched whatever tivo had recorded and went to bed. When he was in the mood, he smoked a cigar while improvising jazz standards, and lately, when he was really in the mood, he chased the cigar with a fifth of scotch and fell asleep on the sofa.

Shrugging out of his jacket, he made his way to the bedroom, where he pulled off his belt, unbuttoned his shirt collar and grabbed a new bottle of vicodin from the dresser. He made a detour to the kitchen on the way back, and grabbed a beer for Wilson and a glass filled with ice for himself. The beer was that terrible old Pabst Blue Ribbon that they'd gorged themselves on back in college. Apparently it was back in style, and Wilson had never lost the taste. His glass was for the Glenlivet he kept conveniently next to the piano.

He sprawled out on the sofa and waited to hear Wilson's footsteps outside the door. Expensive shoes, strong step, House could pick that footstep out at twenty paces. Thirty minutes later Wilson was letting himself in and dropping a paper sack onto the still-littered coffee table.

"You remembered the lo mein, right?"

"Yes, I remembered," Wilson's voice had that special tone that infuses those who have been asked the same question fifty times.

"Good," House said as he rummaged around in the bag, grabbed one box and a pair of chopsticks.

"You know, I only forgot it that one time. You could let it go."

House started jabbing at the noodles and shoveling them into his mouth. "Never."

The next few minutes were interrupted only by the sounds of chewing, swallowing, bottles being opened, and the occasional 'gimme that'. Then, food decimated, the two men leaned back in their seats and let out the sigh of the well fed. House picked up the remote.

"What, no talking?"

The blue eyed stare that was tossed in Wilson's direction, became more intense with each second. House's brows drew together and his mouth quirked down in annoyance. "There was no tupperware party."

"No."

Another inch of amber liquid sloshed into his glass and he stood up and limped heavily to the piano. "Just had to get me alone, eh? Well don't try anything. I'm not that drunk, or that easy."

Wilson chuckled and shook his head. "No fear there. I like you, but I don't like, like you."

"So let me guess, then; you're worried about me." How very ironic that Wilson should go all mothering when he was finally starting to take some small shuffling steps in a direction other than backwards.

"Something like that," Wilson answered, keeping his eyes fixed on House's stiff body and watching it slowly relax as he clipped the end off a cigar, lit it, took a puff, set it down, and started playing the piano.

"Well you can stop it." Strains of _In a Sentimental Mood_ lifted into the air.

Wilson huffed out a breath of air and took another drink. "Right. Because you're so well adjusted." He drank again while he waited for House to finish the bridge. "You closed yourself off after Stacy got here. You've alienated everyone, even Allison. A few weeks ago, when you were treating Andie, I thought maybe you were having some sort of epiphany, but no. You go out, buy a Triumph, and now you're back to closing yourself into your office and barking out orders like a crippled Napoleon. Have you even ridden the bike since you bought it?"

"It's a delicate machine. No sense messing it up."

"House." The one word held a thousand others.

"I asked her out."

Wilson's double-take was so broad it was nearly audible. "Wh-what? Who? What are you talking about?"

"I asked Dr. Cameron out. Happy now? For at least one night, I won't be shut away in my house or my office."

The word dumbstruck, definitely applied to Wilson at the moment. Not because he couldn't think of what to say, but because he had too many words fighting to get out. Too many words that would no doubt cause House to lock down and add armed sentries to the walls.

"She said yes?" It was the logical first question.

House tilted his head slightly, one eyebrow raised. Even he was still a little surprised. "Yes, she did."

Wilson was silent for a minute. He was weighing his options. Last time, he'd given advice. How much of it had been taken, he'd probably never know, but the outcome had been less than happily-ever-after… not that such a thing would ever be possible with House.

"Well good." They were the only words that were both supportive, yet non-pushy.

"That's it?"

"If you want condoms, you know where to find them."


	3. Chapter 2

_And here we have the date... or the beginnings of it anyway! Thank you all for your interest and comments. Criticism on this part would be particularly welcome. Let me know if the tone/language/style is still in keeping with the rest of the story. Enjoy! _

Chapter 2

A pair of size 2 jeans, a loosely knit black sweater, and three inch black ankle boots. Cameron glanced inside her bag, sighed and dodged past incoming shoppers as she left the mall. She'd told him she was going to wear jeans. She'd never specified that they would be old. Besides, she had lost a few pounds and her old jeans hung off her slight frame. Rationalization was a beautiful thing.

It wasn't yet full dark, but the lights in the parking lot were on, obscuring any chance of seeing the first stars pop out. Cameron glanced up anyway as she walked to her car. She saw Venus, mid-way up the sky, and another planet beneath it, Mercury or Mars, she could never remember. She could remember wishing on them when she was very young. Then her older brother had told her they weren't stars and called her a stupid girl for being so sappy anyway. She'd scowled at him and gone to her room, but the next day she'd walked to the library and taken out a book about astronomy. No wonder none of her wishes had come true. She wasn't going to make that mistake again.

Her little car gave off a friendly sounding beep as she hit the remote to unlock the doors. Tossing her bag onto the passenger seat, she strapped in and pulled out of the parking lot. She had a twenty minute drive back to her apartment, but she didn't turn on the radio. She needed the silent time to think. Mainly she was thinking about what a stupid sappy girl she was being. She'd been down this road before. She knew that opening herself up to House was a sure way to get hurt, but here she was, doing it again. Maybe she really was some sort of a martyr. Except she didn't feel like a martyr because as stupid as it was, she still had some vestiges of hope. Not of a triumphant rescue by God, but something considerably smaller. She couldn't help believing that the connection she'd felt months ago wasn't just a figment of her imagination.

She wondered what had suddenly inspired him to come to her in a darkened lab and invite her out. She had a wide streak of cynicism now and she'd spent two days convincing herself that he was playing games with her, but she'd seen his eyes when she'd asked him if he was serious. He hadn't been lying. He lied about patients, treatments, himself, Stacy, but he hadn't been lying when he'd looked into her face and answered her.

It started to rain, and her headlights glinted off the slick pavement, bouncing off yellow fluorescent paint and white mile markers. Cameron cracked open her window and took a deep breath of moist air. Stray droplets found their way inside and splashed against her shoulder and arm, feeling like a cooling benediction, giving her strength. The steady whoosh of the wiper blades and the monotonous rush of water hitting the undercarriage soothed nerves that she hadn't even realized were on edge. She turned onto her street and made a promise. No matter what happened in twenty-four hours, she would not lose herself.

* * *

The hospital was strangely quiet on Friday, almost as if everyone in it and the very building itself were waiting in anticipation for the evening. All of which was completely ridiculous, of course, because not only was the building an inanimate object, and the people within it completely lacking the information about what was to come, but also because a relationship between Drs. House and Cameron was hardly the most earth-shattering thing to play out on hospital grounds. Still, if Cameron seemed a bit paranoid, and House was even more standoff-ish, they definitely had their reasons.

Cuddy hadn't referred any patients to them so House was relegated to clinic duty, while Cameron and the others finished mindless paperwork and caught up on their reading. Cameron was also called to fill in for a doctor in the immunology department, and that's where she spent her afternoon, not quite sure if she should be relieved that she wouldn't have to see House until their arranged meeting time.

Down in the clinic, House proved his point about a monkey being able to do the job, by walking from exam to exam like a mindless robot. Only an interesting rash on a seventeen year old piqued his interest, but a few pointed questions later and he diagnosed a simple case of 'swimmer's itch'. He sent him off in search of caladryl lotion and warned him not to swim near the flocks of geese.

As the heavy exam room door shut on the last patient of the afternoon, House dropped his chart on the main desk, scrawled something that approximated his signature on the sign-in sheet, and made good his escape. He spent the elevator ride and the walk to his office analyzing what he was feeling. He was about to take his very attractive, undeniably nice, and formerly fixated co-worker out on a date. Well, she wasn't exactly his co-worker, but he wasn't going to quibble with himself about that. He'd let Cuddy handle it since she hadn't had a problem with the first date. Pretty, young, nice and obviously interested… at least he assumed she was interested or she wouldn't have accepted the offer. The proper feelings for a man his age faced with such a situation ranged from giddily overjoyed to flat-out petrified. House could claim neither extreme, and even the middle ranges didn't really equate to the emotions running through him, because what he was feeling was depression and acceptance. In his mind he had already run through ever possible outcome to date-night, part two, and he couldn't think of any that left him or Cameron smiling.

His chair let out a tired sounding squeak and he spun to face the windows, watching the coming twilight creep over the sky. For a fleeting moment he wondered if maybe he was just afraid to imagine himself happy. It had been so long that he worried that he'd forgotten what that felt like. He had his piano, and scotch, monster trucks and cigars. Flashes of happiness, but nothing permanent, nothing lasting. Nothing since Stacy, and if that relationship, over five years ago, was going to be the last happiness in his life… he didn't want to know about it.

Checking his watch, he saw that it was six forty-five. He needed to get going or he'd be late. As he stood up, one more feeling rushed through him, speeding up his heart and making him grip his cane a fraction tighter. Anticipation. It wasn't happiness yet, but it was something.

On his way out of the hospital he spotted Cuddy down in her office. She looked up as he walked by, and for a second it looked like she was about to motion him inside, but then she gave a look reminiscent of a defeated mother, and bent back over her paperwork. A smug grin pulled at the corner's of House's mouth. Sometimes the little pleasures were what got him through the day.

Once home, he checked his watch again. He'd left a simple yellow post-it note on Cameron's chair with the reminder '7:30, sharp', and now he was in danger of being late. He glanced at the sofa and remembered another date night, and Wilson patiently, if sarcastically, coaching him on how to behave. Right. He'd followed all of Wilson's advice, and then he'd veered off onto his own knowingly destructive path. He didn't want to do that tonight, but containing his own self-loathing long enough to be honest was a daunting proposition. The problem being that he never admitted his self-loathing until long after it was too late, generally after he'd downed too much alcohol and one too many vicodin.

Full darkness was beginning to descend and he turned on the light in his bedroom, the pale yellow glow turning the predominantly brown room into a sepia photograph. He quickly changed shirts, but kept his jeans on and then, after just a few minutes in the bathroom, he was prepared to go. Prepared, but not precisely ready. After staring at his reflection in the old art deco style mirror that hung over his sink, he didn't know if he'd ever be ready. He was dressed, he was clean and he smelled relatively good. That was the best he could do at the moment.

Cameron's apartment was surprisingly close to his own place, and he arrived there just shy of seven-thirty. As agreed, he had not brought a corsage. Standing in the parking lot and cloaked by the coming night, he tilted his head back and marked which window was hers. A hazy light spilled from within, but the angle was too great for him to see her lithe form moving around inside. With clenched jaw and clenched hand, he headed for the door.

The elevator and hallway were familiar, crisp white paint and plain blue carpet leading to her door, which was also familiar. He had been there twice before, so that made sense, but this was a different sort of familiarity. It felt more like he'd been there two hundred times instead of two, and the sensation almost unnerved him. His cane was raised, and ready to knock against the door, but he stopped himself and let the smooth wood slide back down through his fingers until it rested on the ground again. He lifted his other hand and rapped quickly, the fleeting thought being that if she didn't answer immediately, he could pretend she wasn't home and just abandon the entire venture.

The door opened while his hand was still in mid-air.

"House," she greeted him with the stiffness that had become part of her being when she was around him. Taking a breath, she forced herself to relax. "Come in while I grab my jacket."

She opened the door fully and he stepped inside, immediately scanning the room with his eyes. It occurred to him that she had seen more of his place than he had of hers. It was simple and tasteful. Very Cameron, although he half-expected to see some dried flower arrangements or frilly throw-pillows on the sofa.

Cameron was looking at him and he realized he still hadn't said anything. "The leather jacket you wore to the truck rally. You should wear it," he told her, and then let his gaze really settle on her, skimming up her long jean-clad legs, to the soft sweater and the softer skin of her chest which the deep v-neck revealed. He hadn't let himself look at her like that for a very long time, and the last time he'd been at her apartment he hadn't even let himself look in her eyes for more than a split second at a time. Too dangerous. Too close.

Cameron was a little surprised that was the best opening line he could come up with, but not much. She turned away from him and grabbed the well-worn jacket from its hook in the closet. When she turned back, he was still staring at her, and she was able to take her first long look at him, all battered jeans and clean black t-shirt under blue chambray and a black leather jacket. He looked casual and sexy and no doubt if he'd been sitting in his living room nursing a glass of whatever it was he drank, he would look comfortable as well.

"You look very nice," she said, hoping to open the door into normal conversation.

House glanced at her again while she closed and locked her apartment. "You too. New boots?" He was making a stab in the dark and she knew it, but she smiled at him indulgently anyway, sensing one of the knots in her spine loosening.

"Yes. New boots. But my earrings are just ten-dollar silver hoops, so you don't have to compliment me on them."

They walked down the hall in relative silence, just a couple of random comments about the weather and the upcoming flu season. The only sound in the elevator was that of House's cane bouncing against the non-slip flooring. They looked at each other as the doors opened, but still didn't say anything until House pushed open the front door for her and led her to the edge of the parking lot.

"A motorcycle? You own a motorcycle? You know how to ride?" Cameron asked, finding it impossible to mask her disbelief when House made a sort of half-hearted flourish in the Triumph's direction and plucked a helmet off the seat.

"Yeah. Cheaper than a car when I was in college," he answered brusquely. "Obviously it was a different bike then."

Cameron's eyes roamed over the sleek machine, taking in the black and chrome and leather. One pale hand reached out and touched the gas tank lightly. "Matthew rode a Harley," she said quietly, and admission she felt somehow required to make.

She didn't look at him and he didn't look at her.

His voice sounded rusty when he spoke. "Matthew. That would be the husband."

There was the slightest inclination of her head as he handed her a helmet. The red one that he usually wore. It was safer than his old Kaiser-style bowl, but if someone's brains were going to get splattered on the pavement he figured it should be the person more inclined towards a death wish.

"Right," He said as he fastened the chin strap and watched her sweep her hair back before settling the helmet on her head. "Harleys are good bikes." And that was all he was willing to say about that.

Cameron took a step back while she watched him approach the motorcycle, wondering if he had trouble getting on, or if he felt less damaged and more free with all that power at his command. His cane tucked into a custom clip on the right hand side and he grabbed the handlebars and quickly swung his left leg over the seat, barely wincing as his weight shifted to the bad thigh. He canted his head to one side and nodded towards Cameron.

"Get on."

She'd been on motorcycles before. She'd been on motorcycles with men before. She walked over with an added swing in her hips, feeling bold and daring, but when she pressed her hand into his shoulder for balance a nervous fluttering settled low in her belly. She could feel his muscles bunching and shifting beneath her fingers, even through the thick leather of his jacket. A breath of cool, bonfire-lit air rushed into her lungs and she swung her leg over, tucked up her knees and held on. He sped out of the parking lot and was going sixty by the time he hit the end of her road.

Cameron was in heaven. Crisp air and leather, and the solid feel of House's back under her, and thumbs hooked through the beltloops of his jeans. The fluttering was gone and she had to remind herself that this wasn't real. This meant nothing. This was just House, being House and he could still end up being just as big an ass as usual. But for those few minutes she was stupidly content. She'd pull herself back together when they got wherever they were going.

It wasn't so much a bar as a club with a bar as the main focal point.

House carried both helmets in his left hand and still opened the door for Cameron with his right. Even twenty years of being a bastard couldn't erase the lessons in manners that his father had drilled into him. She passed through the door, trying not to look anything but relaxed.

"Don't worry, they serve food," he said as he came up behind her.

"I wasn't worried," she said with a cheeky smirk.

There wasn't anyone to lead them to a table, so House led the way to the front of the room, slightly to the right of the piano which sat beneath a flickering spotlight. There were a few people already seated at tables, but they were closer to the back of the room, presumably so that they wouldn't be disturbed by the music. The bar was even more heavily populated, with almost every one of the steel and leather barstools taken.

A waitress approached before the silence could get really uncomfortable, and she handed out menus and took their order for drinks. There hadn't been a moment of hesitation before House had asked for scotch, and Cameron had been only a breath behind in her request for a vodka tonic, light on the tonic. The waitress apparently sensed their need, and was back with the drinks within two minutes, at which time they were ready to order.

House pulled the red stirrer from his drink and took a drink, letting the liquid pool at the back of his throat before swallowing. He looked around at the other patrons, not really interested in them, but letting his mind tumble over their lives to avoid thinking about his own or Cameron's. His eyes drifted to the door and then the bar, and then back to his drink.

The act of indifference was not lost on Cameron, but she was practically immune to it. She took a sip of vodka and watched him as he avoided even glancing in her direction.

"You know, if you wanted to make Stacy jealous, you picked the wrong place. I don't think she hangs out in bars. Or did you expect me to run giddily through the halls and announce our date?" She stared down at her drink, condensation dripping around her fingers where she held the tumbler too hard. "Sorry. I won't be making that mistake again."

"No." House ran a finger along the edge of his scotch glass before taking a long sip. "I don't suppose you will." _Be making that mistake. Be making this mistake. Be here for long._

"So…" What happened to not asking probing questions? "Is this where you and Dr. Wilson come when you're hiding out from the hospital?"

That brought an unexpected smirk to his face. "No. Surprisingly, Wilson's tastes are higher class than mine. He likes that trendy wine bar on McKeel. Lots of ambient lighting and waitresses in tight blouses."

"Must be hell for you." Sarcasm was becoming her friend.

He swirled his glass, listening to the muted clink of the ice, before taking another swallow. "Scotch is scotch. I go there when I need company. I come here when I just need to drink."

"So I drive you to drink," she said, stating the obvious cliché.

"Shh. Here comes the floorshow," he evaded her unasked question.

A smartly dressed man and a woman in an evening dress wound their way from the back room and towards the piano. At first glance they looked overdressed for the place, but Cameron saw the slight fraying at his cuffs and the fact that the dress was a knock-off of one she'd seen at Lord & Taylor. He had tired looking eyes, and she was wearing too much makeup, but surprisingly they looked almost happy. Strange. Sort of went against the stereotype of drunken piano player and hard-up singer. Their hands brushed when she walked past him to settle into the deep crook of the piano, and Cameron felt a brief, sharp stab of jealousy. She looked over towards their waitress and nodded, then let the alcohol burn down her throat and settle warmly in her stomach, finishing one drink and waiting for the next.

This bar had been… unexpected… but she now saw the logic in his choice. With the music playing they didn't have to talk, and after all, that's what always got them in trouble. House's eyebrows went up when he noticed the waitress placing Cameron's refill on the table. He slung back his own drink and placed the glass on the scratched plastic tray, the request unspoken. The waitress bobbed her head slightly in acknowledgement and then retreated to the bar. She hoped they were good tippers.

Their food arrived in the middle of the first set, exactly when the awkward conversation should have been coming to a head. Cameron's chicken looked delicious and she was grateful for the music. She hadn't been eating well lately, and it would have been a shame to walk out on such good food. She ate almost every bite and then leaned back and watched House. If her staring bothered him, he didn't say so.

Mack (that was the pianist's name, or at least the name he used) announced that they were taking a fifteen minute break and after a smattering of applause he and the singer (Sadie, if the placard was to be believed) wandered to the bar. House watched them leave as if seeing his one lifeboat departing and then swung his head around to face Cameron. She was still staring at him, and he couldn't decide if she was sizing him up or imagining them in a tangle of limbs on the conference room table.

"So." What a brilliant conversation starter. He'd have to pat himself on the back for that later.

"So," Cameron repeated. She took a breath and then took some slight pity on him. "Nice music."

"Yeah. They're here every week." Damnit. He'd invited her out. He was supposed to have some kind of plan.

"Why'd you bring me here, House," she asked, her shoulders moving into a shrug. She leaned her forearms on the table and cupped her glass between her hands. "What do you want?"

His mouth puckered and then twisted to one side and then the next, while his eyes roamed the bar as if expecting the answer to be drifting in the smoke that swirled towards the ceiling.

"I'm not sure."

She looked at him in doubtfully. "You don't know? House, you're a man who has more going on in his brain than any five other men and you're telling me you don't know why you asked me out? You've got to do better than that. Because you know what? I was just about over you." Surely he wouldn't see through that little lie. "And now you've dragged me out with you and made me wonder about things all over again. So don't sit there and tell me you don't know."

House leaned back and let her words hit him. He was unaccustomed to having so many of them flung at him at once. Usually they kept their more heated exchanges to one-liners.

"I can't give you some flowery speech."

"That's not what I'm looking for and you know it," she countered, eyes turning briefly cold at the suggestion that she was some shallow love-struck girl.

"You're alone," he said frankly.

She wasn't expecting his words or his tone and she blinked a few times before taking a long drink of her vodka. "So are you," she had taken his trick of answering a question by stating something about the questioner.

"You're right. I am." He drummed his fingers on the table wishing that his drink wasn't already gone. He'd downed it in one right after she'd started talking.

"And?" She wasn't giving anything away tonight.

"And when you're in the room, I don't feel alone."

She should have answered with a sarcastic remark about how that was because he wasn't. She had her mouth open to say just that, but the expression on his face stopped her. It was open and vulnerable and almost hopeful. He dropped his gaze to the table and brought his empty glass to his mouth, obliterating the openness with the attempt to get scotch from ice. When he thumped the glass back on the table and looked up again, Cameron was still staring at him.

Her hand was already on the table and she moved it closer to his, feeling like an idiot the whole time and willing her muscles to stop moving -f or God's sake stop moving and making a fool out of me! - but they didn't and her hand ended up palm up, fingertips brushing his. He looked at her hand as if it was a poisonous snake or possibly a mythical beast and Cameron curled her fingers inwards and sighed, feeling the blush rise up her neck to her cheeks.

The weight of his warm hand on top of hers was much heavier than she'd imagined, but it was fleeting. Just a brief press against her flesh, a slight tentative look in her direction, and then it was gone and he was gripping his glass of ice again and spinning the cubes around trying to go against the nature of centrifugal force and clink together. If Cameron hadn't actually been watching, she might have imagined his touch, but her eyes had been open the entire time, and now she raised them and looked unblinkingly into his face.

"It's a start," she said, and then Mack and Sadie were back and she turned to watch them, pretending that she couldn't see House still tracing her profile with his gaze.


	4. Chapter 3

_Here we are... the remains of the date. Thank you once more for your comments and criticisms (More criticism would be good!)_

Chapter 3

They stayed through the second set, two more drinks, and snatches of stilted conversation that was trying for normal. He'd graduated from Michigan, practically next door to her home state, but she already knew that, and she'd spent two summers as a camp counselor in Maine, but he'd already known that. The only truly new information was the fact that they were willing to actually share those things instead of having them be random second-hand discoveries.

It was almost eleven when House pushed the heavy wooden door open and ushered Cameron out into the autumn night. The chill air sobered him up quickly, not that he was particularly drunk to begin with. Years of practice turned nursing four drinks over the course of an evening into amateurs' night. Cameron, he imagined, was not so well-practiced and he expected her to show the effects of the night. She did give a slight shuffling stumble when the coldness hit her face like ice water. She even felt like giggling for a second as the tingling feeling of being alive thrummed like crackling energy across her skin. House watched her, waiting for that giggle, for that bigger fall that would leave her limp with her arms around his neck, forcing him to support her the way he lied to himself about dreading. The bubbling laugh never materialized, instead stopping at a quirky half-lifted smile, and she held herself straighter after she'd taken a full breath of non-smoke-filled air. She beat him to the motorcycle without even challenging him to a race. Later he would say he let her win just so he could watch her hips sway.

She stood a step away again, letting him get on, but this time he didn't need to motion her to join him. She swung on behind him and hooked her thumbs into his belt-loops, fingertips tracing the line of his belt.

He grabbed her hand and nearly pulled her thumb out of joint as he jerked it away from his waistband.

"Hold on right," he said gruffly, pulling it around his midsection. "You've been drinking and if you fall off, I'm not stopping to scrape your entrails off the road."

Her momentary thrill of House's actions was quashed by his ever-present sarcasm, but she reached around with her other hand and fanned it out over his stomach. "Oh, and you haven't had a drop," she said in reply.

"Years of practice," voice low and tinged with something he would never label as regret but which had no other name. He hit the gas, kicked the bike into gear and they sped out of the parking lot throwing up gravel and dust in their wake.

The drive back to her apartment took them towards the outskirts of Princeton, but House drove them even farther, winding through a side street and out onto a stretch of two-lane highway that was the opposite of a short-cut. Cameron wasn't sure if she should read anything into it other than that he felt like riding. She felt like riding too, so she wasn't about to stop him. She stopped short of resting her chin on his shoulder, but held on tighter as he topped eighty. Her hands had slipped under his leather jacket and rested against his soft shirt, feeling his blood and breath in her palms. He pressed his right hand over hers on the straight-a-ways and she knew it wasn't to make sure she wouldn't fall off. When he finally pulled up at her apartment building it was after midnight.

Cameron slid off the bike, grateful that her legs were still willing to support her after being tucked up and pressed against House's thighs. A shiver ran through her body as it adjusted to the absence of House's back pressed against it. She wasn't sure what his plan was, but she was a little relieved and a little surprised when he didn't just give her a hasty nod and speed off into the dark the second she had both feet on the ground.

Pulling his cane free, he dismounted and tugged off his helmet. Their eyes met when she handed him the custom graphite helmet she'd been wearing, and then he watched as she ran her fingers over the still warm gas tank and leather seats.

"Great bike," she said and she wasn't fawning or being disingenuous. "A definite chick magnet." That was said with a raised brow and coy smile. House didn't think he'd seen that smile before.

"Spur of the moment purchase," he admitted.

"What happened to the one you had in college?"

"Sold it a few years ago." Ten to be exact.

Cameron didn't need him to say the words in order to hear them. Inside she was smiling rather smugly.

"She wasn't the biker chick type," House verified what Cameron had already been thinking.

Her delicate eyebrows rose slightly but she made no other motion. "Oh. I guess the strip club meeting was just a rumor then."

House's eyebrows shot upward at that, and he looked toward her for an explanation.

"Cuddy's new secretary," she said with a shrug. "He gossips and he's got ears like a bat."

House huffed out a breath of air. "It was Wilson's first bachelor party. Stacy was one of the wife's friends and they showed up to add to the fun."

Cameron could easily imagine Stacy Warner… well, her name hadn't been Warner back then… she could imagine her cutting a path through a crowd of horny men and tossing back drinks while carelessly daring anyone to come near her. She could also imagine House jumping at the challenge.

"Is this why you agreed to go out? To dig up information about Stacy? I could be wrong, but I don't think she swings that way."

Rolling her eyes, Cameron looked away, over the tops of the buildings. "No, it's not. Forget I asked." She wasn't sure why she had. Or maybe she was. Morbid curiosity. Desire to know what about the other woman had captured House's affections. Longing to know if she could ever measure up.

"You want coffee?" She spoke in order to silence her inner voice, without thinking about what she was saying. Hopefully he couldn't see her cringing on the inside.

He shocked the hell out of her with his answer. "Sure. Why not?"

It only took a moment to recognize and react to what he'd said. With her chin up and her windswept hair swinging loose down her back, she looked wild and more self-assured than she felt, but that was all right because she looked into his slightly wavering eyes and still felt twice as confident as she had a week ago.

" Come on, then. It's freezing out here," she said, and led the way inside.

He followed her into the apartment building and then into the elevator. That was when he was supposed to start making pithy comments, or messing with her mind, or something else suitably antagonistic enough to be worthy of coming from his mouth. No words came. Instead he tapped his cane against the floor and restrained himself from pressing all of the buttons… all of her buttons… either, or.

Cameron unlocked her door and ushered him in, and House was once more surprised at the way she was opening her space up to him now after guarding it so determinedly during those first two visits so long ago. She didn't even give him any strict instructions not to touch anything.

"You can take your jacket off and sit… or not…" she trailed off as House walked over to her bookcase and started running a finger along the spines. "I'll go start the coffee."

House made an almost dismissive wave in her direction and kept his eyes on the books. She wanted to be offended, but she wasn't. She could see that he just wasn't ready to look at her yet. Not with them on almost equal footing here. After kicking off her shoes, she padded into the kitchen, wondering what normal would be like for them.

Patricia Cornwell, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Anne Tyler, Tennyson, Colette, Shakespeare. The paperbacks alone were an eclectic selection, and he hadn't even moved onto the lower shelves where the hardback and oversized books were shelved. Leave it to Cameron to have everything organized. His own books were lucky to be on shelves at all, and he seemed to remember that he had a Stieglitz photography book next to _Best Erotica of 2004_. He glanced down and saw the same book on Cameron's sidetable… the Stieglitz, not the erotica. No doubt any books like that were relegated to her bedroom, probably tucked into a drawer in her nightstand.

Hearing the sounds of a coffee grinder… of course she ground her own beans… House made a couple of steps towards the narrow hallway that had to lead back to her bedroom. It would be interesting to test his theory. He turned back around and headed towards the sofa, blaming his aching thigh as the reason for his aborted nosiness. Certainly he couldn't actually be respecting her privacy.

Water and sliding drawers and rattling china. He expected Cameron to come back into the living room while the coffee brewed, but she didn't. Maybe she needed a breather from him. When she returned she had two mugs, and House was drumming the fingers of his left hand on his knee while his right hand pressed the treble-clef part of a Chopin waltz into his cane. She handed him his coffee and he took a sip, burning his tongue in the process.

"Aww, just the way I like it. You make such a good little wife," he said, needing to break the tension.

"So I've been told," she said flatly, and House realized how unfunny his joke was. He took another sip, not caring about his tongue, but wondering what it was about her and this night, that was causing him to lose his edge.

The sofa dipped slightly as Cameron sat down, demurely crossing her ankles and holding her mug with both hands as if drinking in the warmth as much as the caffeine.

"I liked that bar," Cameron said, settling on something non-confrontational to discuss. "The singer was good."

"She's good window-dressing. He's the talent."

So much for being agreeable. Window-dressing. Art in the lobby. Was that how he had to define every woman? She didn't believe that. If she did, then she wouldn't be sitting with him in her apartment drinking the gourmet flavored coffee that she saved for when she was feeling depressed. She saw past that sometimes chauvinistic façade. At least she thought she did. She drank deeply and let the unsweetened liquid burn down the back of her throat and warm her from the inside.

House twitched, his eyes flickering to her face before returning to his coffee. "Okay, this is awkward."

"For you."

"Not for you?" he challenged.

"More awkward than our non-date, but less awkward than our real date. Maybe awkward works for me," Cameron quipped.

"But weird doesn't."

"No," she replied with finality. "Look. Did you expect me to make this easy for you? To just forget everything that's happened over the past month and go back to the way I felt before?"

Dead silence.

He heaved himself to his feet. "Fine. I'll see you Monday. We can be all awkward together."

"Wait! What are you doing? That's it? You just walk out?"

"You may have missed it, but I'm not the begging type."

"I'm not asking you to beg."

"Right. You're just asking me to sit here and… And what? Make pleasant conversation? Discuss the weather?"

"Maybe. Maybe just a normal conversation would be nice. Something without barbed hooks punctuating every sentence."

"What, no insightful and deeply personal questions from you?" he countered, weight shifted to his good side, cane waggling in her direction.

"Nope. I'm done with those. Feel free to ask me some though," she answered, as much a dare as anything else.

Clear blue focused and burned. Cameron forced herself not to squirm.

"You could be sorry you offered," House growled.

"Probably, but I'm sick of being blindsided. At least this way I'm prepared."

She had a point and he tilted his head in tip-of-the-hat to her. Score one for her.

"What if I don't want to ask any questions. What if I just want to rip your clothes off and fuck your brains out." There. That should get a reaction.

Her eyebrows rose, accepting the challenge.

"Then I'd tell you I don't put out on the second date."

Was that a flicker of an upward curl behind his perpetual scowl?

"And what do you do on the second date?"

Cameron stood and put her coffee on the end-table. "Leave 'em wanting more."

House stared at her for a long time. It felt like a long time. It was at least thirty seconds. An eternity.

"What the hell are we doing here?" he finally mumbled, not defeated, but lost.

Her feet made no sound as she stepped closer to him. He felt her heat just inches away as he stared at the floor.

"Not sure about that myself," she replied, "but I liked the bar. I liked the bike. I don't want to fix you, and I'm less alone with you too."

He was slow to look up, and she wouldn't have been surprised if he'd just turned and walked out, just like that time in the lab, with her fists on her hips and him not wanting to answer any questions.

"Kissing."

"What?"

"Kissing on the second date."

She wanted to grin, but she didn't. It didn't feel right somehow. Theirs was not a grinning relationship.

"Yes. At the door."

"Fine. Then I'm ready to say goodnight."

He walked to the door, pulled it open and stepped through, then pivoted and waited for her to take up her spot on the threshold. After shaking her head slightly, she did.

She crossed her arms in front of her chest, but it was really too late for self-protection.

"So there will be a third date?" she asked, chin jutting forward.

His only answer was a curt nod. She looked at him appraisingly, before closing the gap between them. That was as much as she'd do. She refused to make the first move.

He didn't leave her waiting long. He was in the middle of bending forward and thoughts of awkwardness, and did-first-kisses-always-feel-like-this? and damn-how-can-her-lips-be-this-soft? sped through his mind. Then there wasn't much thinking involved anymore, and he was surprised to break away and realize that his rough hand was cupping her shoulder blade, and both her hands were on his hips as she stood on her toes to reach his mouth.

"I'll see you Monday," he repeated his earlier words, but they lacked the bitterness that had infused them before.

"Monday," she echoed, and she stayed in her spot as he walked away. As she closed her door she wondered if she should have tossed caution to the wind and considered this their third date. After all, monster trucks stood for something, didn't they? But the thought was fleeting, and she gathered the coffee mugs and walked to the kitchen with what could only be called a smug smile on her face. It had felt exceptionally good to kiss Greg House.


	5. Epilogue

_And here is the epilogue! I don't want to drag it on forever, but it has been fun to write this version of them (a more realistic version than usual I think) and there is always the possibility of Date Number Three :)_

_Thank you all for your support, as usual, and let me know if a Third Date would interest you or if it's better to just leave it here... obviously my own inspiration will really determine whether I write it, but it's always nice to gauge interest._

Epilogue

It rained all weekend. Not pleasant showers, but raw driving rain that seemed to announce, for those who had missed it, that summer was over and wouldn't be seen again for another nine months. Cameron spent the weekend holed up in her apartment except for a brief foray to the grocery store. On the drive there she saw a brave, or stupid, man out on his Harley and she wondered if she'd get another chance to ride House's bike before it really got too cold.

It was strange how her thought process changed over the weekend. Before the date she had spent long periods of time agonizing about House. She'd spend an hour wondering if she was stupid to go out with him, and a half hour wondering if he'd ever open up, and another half hour contemplating his eyes. Now, thoughts of him just slipped into her mind unbidden, but the obsessive thoughts were gone. She wasn't quite sure what to make of that. She did spend some time wondering how long she'd have to wait for the third date, or if she'd have to initiate it herself. A touch of her lips and she smiled and figured she probably wouldn't have to wait too long.

When her alarm sounded on Monday morning, she cracked her eyes open dreading another bleak day, but the clouds had parted and sunshine was pouring into her room. She hoped it was a sign of how the week would go. With typical efficiency she got herself ready and drove to the hospital humming a bit of a song. She was in the parking garage when she noticed that it was one of the songs she'd heard Friday night. She smiled and kept humming as she walked inside.

The blinds in House's office were open and Cameron saw him thumbing through a file while bobbing his head, iPod firmly in place. She thought about going in to say good morning, but stopped her hand before it connected with the door. Instead, she continued onto the conference room and her little desk by the window. No one else was in, and Cameron hung up her coat and bag before turning to the coffee maker.

She'd taken to drinking tea instead of coffee. Just a little bit of rebellion that meant she had no reason to make the coffee and couldn't be blamed for the sludge House and the others managed to brew. She'd actually been smugly pleased when she'd noticed that House had been reduced to buying his coffee at the cafeteria. This morning she wasn't feeling smug. She was feeling like making coffee.

One hand opened the cupboard to get the coffee while the other opened the drawer to grab the filters. Both hands froze for an instant when she saw a new bag of expensive vanilla hazelnut coffee sitting on the shelf. It was the same flavor, the same brand even, that she had served to House on Friday. He hadn't gone into her kitchen so there was no way he'd seen the bag, but apparently one of his lesser-known skills was flavor identification.

It shouldn't have made her feel the little bubble of warmth in her belly, but it did. It shouldn't have made that little bubble rise into a smile, but it did. From anyone else it would have been nothing. Less than nothing, really. But coming from House, it was practically a declaration of intent. She couldn't decide if she was pathetic for feeling so pleased and being so willing to accept so little, so she chose to shelve her thoughts in favor of the mindless routine of coffee preparation.

When she entered House's office ten minutes later there was a red mug of coffee in one hand and a patient file in the other. He looked up at her without smiling, but with a new expression in his eyes. A fluid motion and the earbuds were pulled out and left to fall to his lap.

"I guess you liked the coffee," Cameron said, handing him the mug, and noticing that he wasn't rushing to pull his hand away or keep their skin from touching, heat to heat, soft to rough.

"Not bad," he acknowledged. Obviously he wasn't going to tell her that he'd made a special trip to Starbucks and smelled all the coffee before identifying the right one. It had been embarrassing enough doing so in front of the multi-pierced, slightly-stoned cashier.

"Good weekend?" Nice short sentences seemed to work best with him.

"Again, not bad. Too wet." It was patently stereotypical, but too much wet, cold weather made his thigh ache more.

"I guess you didn't get to take the bike out."

"Nope." No sense telling her that other than one long ride the weekend after buying it, the sleek Triumph had sat in his garage until the night of their date, and now, after feeling her pressed against him as he rode, he had no desire to go out touring without that sensation accompanying him. Like a corsage, such words would probably just get her hopes up, and he wouldn't want that.

The professional reason for Cameron's visit was still in her hand and she seemed to remember that and thrust it forward. "Dr. Petrovski wants you to take another look at Kevin Trent."

House kept his eyes on Cameron's as he reached for the folder. He kept her gaze even as he spoke. "I thought we sent him up to neurology last week. Simple stroke accompanied by not so simple tumor."

"Dr. Petrovski says he's exhibiting new symptoms."

House rolled his eyes and finally looked away, flipping the blue file open impatiently. "We really need a 'no-tags-back' policy around here," he muttered.

Normally when he released a patient they were on their way out the hospital doors, either to another hospital or their home. He really hated it when they stayed in-house, so to speak. It meant constant pestering from the department he'd signed them over to.

"Think of it this way; consulting on his case will keep you out of the clinic for an hour or two."

The sarcastic tease was something he'd missed from her. She'd grown in snarkiness over the past few months, but it had been grounded in bitterness. The light joking in her voice was much more welcome.

"Since when have you ever tried to help me get out of clinic duty."

"First time for everything," she replied, raising one eyebrow meaningfully before retreating to her desk.

The door swung shut and it felt like a bit of the air had left with Cameron. House stared at the file, and then at the mug before putting down the former and picking up the latter. The first sip of coffee was perfect. Temperature, sweetness, quality. A shade of normality brought back better than before. _First time for everything_. Maybe there was.

* * *

It was lunchtime and Cameron went to the cafeteria, which she rarely did unless she was pestered into it by Foreman, but she'd forgotten her lunch. What thoughts had made her distracted enough to forget food were best left unspoken. Luckily she still had cash in her wallet from a bet she'd made with Chase, so she stood in line with her salad and her soup and wondered if the cashier could possibly go any slower. She was a good girl outside, but that didn't mean she had the patience of a saint inside. By the time she'd reached the front of the line she was already feeling a bit bad about calling the fifty year old grandmother a slow-witted twit, in her head. She smiled extra wide to make up for it and told her to have a nice day even after two quarters slipped from gnarled fingers onto the floor, forcing her to get down on her knees to retrieve them.

The cafeteria was still somewhat empty, with a few clutches of doctors towards the corners and a muddle of patient relatives looking slightly dazed, perched on their seats instead of relaxed against the padded vinyl. It was easy to find an empty table near the window, and Cameron sat down and looked outside while she sprinkled oyster crackers on cream of tomato soup.

A few people were actually sitting outside in the sunshine, but it was too cold for her. She'd grown up in the north but it hadn't made her cold-tolerant, a fact which her brother never failed to pick on her about. In a few months she'd probably think fifty degrees was balmy, but at the moment she considered it freezing.

Blowing lightly on her still too-hot soup, Cameron glanced around the room again, making note of who was where. She knew that Chase and Foreman had gone out to lunch, because they'd asked her to go with them and she'd declined. She was still in a thoughtful mood, and knew she wouldn't be great company which would only lead the two of them to ask her what was wrong. Foreman especially had taken on a brotherly role and she didn't think he'd be too impressed with the fact that she and House had gone on another date. Of course she was a grown woman and it was really none of his business, but she was also Cameron, which made it difficult for her to tell people to back off. Unless they were House. She'd gotten relatively good at saying it to him.

Very delicately she took a sip of broth, wincing when it burned her tongue. She was never patient enough. About anything really. So often quiet, and relatively unassuming, but then something would grip her and she would have to deal with it right then, right there. No easing into it, or working up to it. She'd been like that with college and later, medical school; filling out applications months in advance and telling, not asking, her parents what she was doing. She'd wanted to get away and she'd succeeded. She'd been the same way with her husband. She'd seen him and loved him and found out about his cancer and refused to back away in spite of it. The heartache that had followed had been of her own making, but she still told herself that it had been worth it. For a brief time she'd been connected, cherished, loved.

Her feelings for House hadn't hit her in the same way as her early love. They'd grown, matured, just as she had over the years, and it had been months before she'd realized that the tingling in her stomach when he was present had nothing to do with what she'd eaten for breakfast or lunch. Then, once again, her internal clock had sped up and she hadn't been able to wait for things to progress. She'd needed answers, explanations, definitions and conclusions. Things that House wasn't nearly ready to give. Things that he probably still wasn't ready to give. It had taken a long time before she'd been able to accept that things couldn't always happen on her timetable. Long enough that she'd thought the time was long gone. He'd surprised her, and despite what people thought of her, not much was able to do that. She didn't know when the cherished or loved part would come along, but she was feeling the connectedness again; that invisible string that felt like it always tugged in his direction. At least now she knew he felt it too. His eyes told her that much at least, and his kiss confirmed it.

She finished the soup and started on the salad, mind drifting away from the subject of House, and onto the subject of their latest patient. She was supposed to run some blood work as soon as she was done eating. If she hurried she'd be able to beat the after-lunch rush at the lab. Strange as it seemed, the hospital did have it's routines and patterns, and lab-tech's and doctors tended to go to lunch saying 'I'll get on that as soon as I get back' more often than not.

The lettuce was a bit limp, and she speared a tomato with the barely serviceable plastic fork and brought it to her mouth. Naturally Stacy chose to enter the cafeteria at that moment. Somehow she always managed to look like a child or an incompetent in front of the older woman, and cheeks puffed out and full of cherry-tomato fit that image perfectly. She chewed quickly and swallowed. Stacy wasn't even looking in her direction, and from that distance she probably wouldn't have seen anything anyway, but it was the principle of the thing. She could fake bravado and nonchalance, but Stacy Warner intimidated her.

How could she not? The woman had breezed into the hospital, momentarily sent House into a tailspin, snagged a plum job, and now walked around with an aura of ownership. In some moments, Cameron wanted to like and admire her, and in others she reminded her of a female Edward Vogler; present simply to disrupt the well-ordered routine that she so relied upon even in the discomforting moments.

Their one and only private conversation still repeated in her head sometimes. Stacy asking if she liked House. Her naively talking about their date. Stacy's response about how their first date had been horrible too, and then they'd moved in a week later. Had she meant that to be encouraging or demoralizing? She'd said it with a wry look that might have been called smug. Or had it been supportive? Either way, Stacy had laid down a proprietary line in the sand. 'I snagged House in a week. You can't do better than that, little girl.' And she hadn't. Because House wasn't the 'move in a week' type anymore, and Stacy was part of the reason why, no matter what she said about him being practically the same as before the infarction.

"Seat taken?"

Cameron almost jumped, and she did drop her fork onto the table, sending shredded carrot and ranch dressing into a messy arc along the laminate surface. She'd been so intent upon watching her erstwhile competition that she hadn't seen House come in from the patio.

"No… no… sit down."

"You were deep in thought. Fantasizing about me again?" he quipped with that sly little grin that looked so ridiculously sexy despite being a put-on.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Cameron surprised herself a bit with how quickly she could regain her balance around him now.

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "You tell me yours, I'll tell you mine."

Cameron chuckled, knowing that innuendo would only take them just so far and that neither of them would really play out the game there in the hospital cafeteria, nevermind the fact that they'd shared only one kiss and were hardly at the fantasy-trading stage.

"I thought you didn't like the cold," she said, changing the subject and nodding her head towards the windows.

"Wilson dragged me out there. Insists the fresh air is good for me. Apparently he thinks I'm a plant or a pet of some sort."

"You love it that he pesters you," she said knowingly. "Let's you know you won't be one of those old men who die and aren't discovered until the smell alerts the neighbors."

Cameron's take on the situation wasn't far off, but House was taken aback to hear her put it so bluntly.

"Plus, in your dysfunctional way, you love him. No, not that way!" she said, rolling her eyes when he opened his mouth to protest.

He shut it, then opened it again. "How d'you know I don't just want you to join our little twosome and make it a menage a trois?" he asked with a playful leer.

"Because," she said confidently, "you don't like to share."

The leer was replaced with a piercing, almost annoyed looking, stare. She had him there, and she laughed again, very quietly, just a few little humor-filled puffs of air.

"How was your weekend?" It was his turn to change the subject.

"Didn't I ask you that question this morning?"

"Yes, and now I'm asking you."

She nodded her acquiescence. "Fair enough. It was cold and wet. I stayed inside reading and doing laundry. Very boring."

"What, no girly get-togethers with nails and hair and chick-flicks?"

"Nope," she replied, and the slight flicker in her eyes reminded him that she'd admitted that she was as alone as he was.

He was awkwardly quiet for a minute, drumming his fingers on the table-top while she debated rescuing him by asking about their patient.

"Movies would be a good third date," he announced, just as she was about to speak.

Cameron swallowed and blinked. Sometimes… most of the time… he was very tough to keep up with.

"Yes. Movies are good," she said, and clenched her fork so hard she almost broke it as she berated herself for her barely intelligible reply. "For a few minutes there, I thought you were going to consider this our third date," she said, recovering quickly.

"Nope," House said as he got to his feet and leaned on his cane. "When it's a date, you'll know it."

He almost smiled, leading her to give him that soft look that made his chest feel too tight.

"Bring the blood work to me as soon as its done," he said, slipping back into surly doctor mode, but as he limped behind her chair, he rested his hand on her shoulder, and she knew it wasn't a matter of balance.


End file.
